[Arc 3!] - Episode 8.1 - Aftermath - Part 1/2

Episode 8 - Expanding Horizons

Ko is a badass. Middling in height, light, fit and a real looker. She's smart and strong and likes felines. But she isn't a catgirl badass; those ears and tails are just emotes, dress-up items. At least that was the case.

 The blood pact Ko asked for and Lila eventually relented to was a secretive affair for me. In the video game Lila's from, there was a cut scene for it, but it was vague as to be interchangeable depending on which NPC you had chosen - that said, plenty of lore was included about it, and in Escape, lore seems to become reality.

If I didn't know better, I'd say it had involved losing and then reattaching a limb, haha... But seriously, a whole lot of pain and magic, oh and a literal blood transfusion of all things - Lila gave Ko a quantity of her blood, as I understand it. All done behind closed doors, Eshu was allowed to help, but no boys allowed.
    The result is that Ko is now a genuine, certifiable, authentic, catgirl badass.

Before the procedure, Lila explained the likelihood of each outcome. A ninety-five per cent chance of becoming a half-blooded demon, and a seventy per cent likelihood of being the same type of demon as the blood giver; Imp in this case.

 Well, you can guess, can't you? Ko went and broke the box on both fronts, being in the five and thirty per cent boxes. Lila says she’s never even heard of someone not only being compatible for the ceremony in the first place, never mind being in both the lesser camps at once.
So instead of becoming a half-demon, half-human, Ko is now a full blooded demon - and her species? Nekomato, a Tier two, cat-spirit demon, taken very roughly from Japanese folklore.

Apparently, it does have a fair amount of compatibility with Imp, specialising in illusion magics, transformations, tricks - with the added bonus of self-buffing abilities - its a serious power up on plain old human.

 Her level was reset to zero but her stats hold over. In essence, Ko is really friggin strong now! No more emotes either, she really has a tail and ears now, and can see better in the dark. She was always oddly good at crazy athletics, so I guess that at least hasn’t changed much. I've never quite understood that, actually. Surely to move like a cat, you'd have to sort of, unlearn how to move your legs like a human, and how would you even do that?

 That aside, it’s quite the transformation. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I have some reservations, I mean, it was a one-way operation - Ko has permanently changed her body, her species, to something that doesn’t even exist back in the old real world. My thoughts on it are a bit mixed, to be honest. That said, I’ve been quite busy myself.

That wasn’t the only event of the last two weeks, you see, not even by half. The villagers we did manage to rescue, or rather that Lila did by saving us, numbered nearly one thousand. Their town was intact enough to rebuild in time, but they were injured, traumatised and exhausted.

 More than that, Lila admitted that leaving the NPCs south of us alone had been a mistake on her part - effectively leaving a base and workforce for any invader to avail of. So she decided to move the residents. Step outside our fort now, and it’s quite a new sight. The fort still stands atop the hill, but in a long line out from it are the anti-raidition windmills. Lila used a spell that emulates radiation to test them, and they really work. How I can't possibly imagine, but with them we've created a line, an invisible wall between us and anything blowing down from the wastelands up north.

 At the bottom of the hill, dug into it, lies the Esltopfo warrens. Once the order was given, Major Tom's people were exceedingly fast at work. Their buildings aren't the lap of luxury per se, but the little fella's seem exceptionally pleased. Built into the hillside, doors I'd have to crawl through, little windows, roofs of dirt and exterior walls of piled stone. They're cute if simple. Of course, a more cynical view of them would be that now, to get to the fort, one doesn't just have to get through the barrier, but walk through the paths in between the houses of Lila's most ardent defenders. I wouldn't want to be that invader, haha.

Past that, on the plains below the fort, is our new town. For now it's somewhat simple, rows of sturdy timber frame and wooden plank abodes, basic dirt tracks running between them - thankfully Escape's inclement weather is not like that of certain city builder games - these basic buildings should be safe from any freak tordnado. The Eslopfo joined forces with the villagers to get housing set up so fast, I helped too, given I was barred from involvement in Ko's bloodpact ceremony..
       There was, and still is, a lot of logistics to taking in a couple of hundred people. The Eslopfo graze grass, but that’s it; they don't drink or generate waste or much of any human complexity. The villagers are obstinately human; they need clean water, they need waste facilities, farms for food and more.

A bit surprisingly, Lila gave me quite a lot of the menu to use in helping out; access to things like temporary objects, supplies we couldn't get on short notice and so on. Honestly, I spent most of the last fortnight being a town planner of all things.
     That hasn't helped completely distract me from feeling a bit distant with Ko in her new role, but I'm happy for her. She seems really pleased to be Lila's blood sister, the second member of Clan Rowan. Well, I might just be their mutt, but I can live with that. I'm not as strong as them and my personality is rotten, but I sure can bark loud, haha…

Anyway, the villagers filled us in on the town's fate prior to our arrival. Despite only having a couple of guardsmen, they put up quite a fight. Farmers, labourers and lumberjacks stood firm against the invading men of metal. It was such a battle that a couple of hundred people actually managed to escape the town in the ensuing chaos, fleeing further south to other smaller villages and hamlets.

 We don't have anything as useful as a census unfortunately, as all the elders, the mayor and his staff died in one way or another. We've estimated around two thousand people were living in the town originally; almost half seem to have died...

A large number in the initial fighting; those brave fighters’s corpses were turned into the thrall slaves we met later on. Many in just those few gruesome hours worked so hard in utterly unsafe conditions that they collapsed dead. But the most of all were killed for power. Disconnected from their homeland, the drones were running pretty low on energy. They decided to use the bio-converters on hundreds to create a long-lasting stockpile almost immediately after gaining control of the town.

 Anyone too old, too feeble, too sick or too young to work was culled. To put it simply, the ratio of villagers we have here ranges from, at best, young teenagers, up to late middle-aged people. One side effect of this is the total loss of elders. The mayor also died, and many other administrative types fought in the initial skirmish. The town secretary was one of the three bodies hanging in the square...

Everyone here is happy to have survived, people are exceedingly grateful to Lila and even to us, and I get it, I do - but I can't help thinking that nearly a thousand people didn't need to die.
Lila could have saved them all. Had she been less cautious when the drones first arrived, or had she taken the villagers in weeks ago, before the barriers of the world fell even. It’s not like they bring with them no benefits: Every resident in the fort’s domain increases the menu currency we have on hand. Moreover, the villagers are setting up farms and the like. They are a genuine, hardy, rural workforce, even after everything that's happened to them. Did all that crazy shit really have to be inflicted upon them?


We've ventured further south to get in contact with other smaller settlements and start rehousing them, as well as finding the villagers who escaped the town. It's good to have a human on these trips rather than just a squad of Eslohpfo, so I've gone on a couple.
     It also doubles as a chance to map the south more thoroughly and check for any scout-drone stragglers. Of course, some people won't want to leave their homes, and we can't make them nor guard them. That being the case, Lila decided some outposts wouldn't be a bad idea as lookouts for the area, so the plan is to set up some smaller forts there in time that will cover our rear and give us more direct oversight of the region.

 We've also decided to finish the road that tunnels right through the mountain. There was a lot of debate over it, but those who died building it might rest easier knowing it's one day used to aid those who survived.

Like I said, it's been a hectic couple of weeks. I'd like to follow all this up with some piffy remark, 'past all this exposition, Eshu is feeling much better!' but that would be a lie.
Some rest did help her past the initial breakdown, but our magenta-haired wonder has not been herself at all. Meek and reserved, she's like a different person. Lila had her act as the blood ceremonies 'shrine-maiden' and has been teaching her and Ko lots more about magic, in an effort to keep her busy at least.

Another strategy to try and get her out of her shell was classes. Escape seems to be at a bit of a loss leveling-wise. We use the Demon Realm's levelling mechanics, but we've been fighting robots from the WarLands game. The result seems to be bundles of experience points. Ko (before her new class) and Eshu both hit level 80 after our misadventure, and even I got to 64, which I'm kind of proud of.
     Given that level 100 is the max for the human class, Eshu could now start thinking about evolving up. Lila thought having Eshu think about cool career paths might be a good way to focus on the future, but it hasn't had much of an effect either.

We decided a trip through the village might be a good idea, let our girl see how many people we saved, who are living happily again and rebuilding their lives. Of course, this could go wrong and just trigger more pain in her, and so, I volunteered to take her alone. After all, I am just a big insensitive man, right? If it does upset her, she can then go be comforted by the 'innocent' women in her life, and we can start thinking up our next strategy. Still, I’m hopeful this could help ease her mind.

Seriously, she just doesn't seem herself. She's wearing a shirt with sleeves that goes past her belly button! A long skirt and a jacket of mine. She walks hunched in on herself quietly next to me, small hand in mine. No perverted jokes, no bubbly cheerleader, a quiet girl, nothing like our usual Eshu. It’s been like this long enough that I'm starting to really worry about it.

"Here we are," I declare, coming to a stop in front of one of the more substantial houses of our new settlement. A stone base foundation marks it as a more sturdy construction, and the veranda with smoking pit gives away its purpose - our very own forge! Every fort should have one.

"My favourite villager lives here," I tell Eshu, looking at her face in hopes of some reaction.

"Pah, you're what," rumbles a voice inside. A giant of a man comes out to greet us. Bushy white beard and eyebrows, rippling muscles in a constant war with the wrinkles of old age. The retired blacksmith of a rural NPC town, the devs bequeathed him with perhaps the most default of names for his occupation - before us stands, the mights Flint!